Berichten van 25 maart 2015 tot 26 maart 2015

De Amerikaanse schrijver Tennessee Williams (eigenlijk Thomas Lanier Williams) werd geboren in Columbus, Mississippi, op 26 maart 1911. Zie ook alle tags voor Tennessee Williams op dit blog.

Uit: A Streetcar Named Desire

« STELLA: Now please tell me quietly what you think you've found out about my sister.
STANLEY: Lie Number One: All this squeamishness she puts on! You should just know the line she's been feeding to Mitch -- He thought she had never been more than kissed by a fellow! But Sister Blanche is no lily! Ha-ha! Some lily she is!
STELLA: What have you heard and who from?
STANLEY: Our supply-man down at the plant has been going through Laurel for years and he knows all about her and everybody else in the town of Laurel knows all about her. She is as famous in Laurel as if she was the President of the United States, only she is not respected by any party! This supply-man stops at a hotel called the Flamingo.
BLANCHE [singing blithely]: "Say, it's only a paper moon, Sailing over a cardboard sea -- But it wouldn't be make-believe If you believed in me!"
STELLA: What about the -- Flamingo?
STANLEY: She stayed there, too.
STELLA: My sister lived at Belle Reve.
STANLEY: This is after the home-place had slipped through her lily white fingers! She moved to the
Flamingo! A second class hotel which has the advantage of not interfering in the private social life of the personalities there! The Flamingo is used to all kinds of goings-on. But even the management of the Flamingo was impressed by Dame Blanche! In fact they were so impressed by Dame Blanche that they requested her to turn in her roomkey -- for permanently! This happened a couple of weeks before she showed here.
BLANCHE [singing]: "It's a Barnum and Bailey world. Just as phony as it can be -- But it wouldn't be make-believe if you believed in me!"
STELLA: What – contemptible – lies."

 

 
Tennessee Williams (26 maart 1911 – 25 februari 1983)
Cover dvd

 

 

De Amerikaanse dichter Gregory Corso werd geboren in New York op 26 maart 1930. Zie ook alle tags voor Gregory Corso op dit blog.

 

Writ On The Steps Of Puerto Rican Harlem

There’s a truth limits man
A truth prevents his going any farther
The world is changing
The world knows it’s changing
Heavy is the sorrow of the day
The old have the look of doom
The young mistake their fate in that look
That is truth
But it isn’t all truth

Life has meaning
And I do not know the meaning
Even when I felt it were meaningless
I hoped and prayed and sought a meaning
It wasn’t all frolic poesy
There were dues to pay
Summoning Death and God
I’d a wild dare to tackle Them
Death proved meaningless without Life
Yes the world is changing
But Death remains the same
It takes man away from Life
The only meaning he knows
And usually it is a sad business
This Death

I’d an innocence I’d a seriousness
I’d a humor save me from amateur philosophy
I am able to contradict my beliefs
I am able able
Because I want to know the meaning of everything
Yet sit I like a brokenness
Moaning: Oh what responsibility
I put on thee Gregory
Death and God
Hard hard it’s hard

I learned life were no dream
I learned truth deceived
Man is not God
Life is a century
Death an instant

 

 
Gregory Corso (26 maart 1930 – 17 januari 2001)
In 1961 in Tangier

 

 

De Zuid-Koreaanse dichter en schrijver Hwang Sun-won werd geboren op 26 maart 1915 in Taedong, Zuid-Pyongan, in het hedendaagse Noord-Korea. Zie ook alle tags voor Hwang Sun-won op dit blog.

Uit: The Mule (Vertaald door Kim Chong-un and Bruce Fulton)

"Now why are you always...," said the old gentleman.  
How could he tell this man, who always welcomed him so heartily, to stop tying up his mule in the accustomed place?  
Feigning reluctance, he went inside.  
"That's it, come on in," chimed in the man's wife with obvious pleasure. Knowing they had put the old gentleman and his family in a fix by tying up their animal next to his house, the husband had told her they should treat him to a drink whenever visited. And so out she went, to return with a bottle in her arms.  
" Afraid there's not much for you to munch on, though..."  
With only kimchi and some scraps of dried pollack for snacks, the liquor soon took effect.  
The old gentleman began to feel flushed. "You know, we have a problem," he ventured.  
As if expecting this, the mule owner broke in: "I know I've gone and put you on the spot, but if you could give us a break and bear with us a little longer... That mule is our livelihood. What else can we do? As you know, uncle, that little mule is all we have in the world. I've said this before, but without that little mule we'd of starved a long time ago."  
No matter how drunk he felt, the old gentleman didn't have the heart to tell the mule owner not to tie up the animal in its usual place because of the mess it made. The man had said he couldn't survive without it. And besides, wasn't himself always accepting warm hospitality from him?  
"Well, sir, there's been all sorts of talk from the neighbors," he ended up saying.  
"I figured as much. But uncle, sir, I wish you wouldn't talk so polite, me being just a young guy and all."  
"Well, for the time being..."   
 

 
Hwang Sun-won (26 maart 1915-14 september 2000)

 

 

De Engels-Ierse schrijver en regisseur Martin McDonagh werd geborenop 26 maart 1970 in Camberwell, Londen. Zie ook alle tags voor Martin McDonagh op dit blog.

Uit: The Lieutenant of Inishmore

« Davey If you’re insulting me hair again, Donny Osbourne, I’ll be off right this minute. After going out of me way to bring your cat in to you . . .
Donny After squashing the life out of me cat, and he isn’t my cat at all . . .
Davey So as not to let the oul flies be picking the meat off him. A favour I was doing you.
Donny It’s a favour now! With half of that cat’s head poking out of the spokes of your wheels, I’ll bet, and it’s a favour you’re doing me!
Davey stares at Donny a moment, then darts out through the front door. Donnygoes over to the cat and strokes it sadly, then sits in the armchair stage left, looking at the cat’s blood on his hands. Davey returns a few moments later, dragging his mum’s bicycle in through the door. It is pink, with small wheels and a basket. He brings it right over for Donny to see, raises its front wheel so that it’s almost in Donny’s face, and starts slowly spinning it.
Davey Now where’s your cat’s head? Eh? Now where’s your cat’s head?
Donny (depressed) Scraping it off on the way wouldn’t have been a hard job.
Davey There’s no cat’s head on that bicycle wheel. Not even a stain, nor the comrade of a stain, and the state of Wee Tommy you’d have had lumps of brain pure dribbling.
Donny Put your bicycle out of me face, now, Davey.
Davey Poor Wee Thomas’s head, a bicycle wouldn’t do damage that decent. Damage that decent you’d have to go out of your way to do.
Donny Your bicycle out of me face, I’m saying, or it’ll be to your head there’ll be decent damage done.
Davey leaves the bike at the front door.
Davey Either a car or a big stone or a dog you’d need to do that decent damage. And you’d hear a dog.
Donny And you’d hear a car."

 

 
Martin McDonagh (Camberwell, 26 maart 1970)
Scene uit een opvoering in het Plays and Players Theatre in Philadelphia, 2011

 

 

De Amerikaanse dichter Robert Lee Frost werd geboren op 26 maart 1874 in San Francisco. Zie ook alle tags voor Robert Frost op dit blog.

 

A Time to Talk

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don't stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven't hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

 

 

A Boundless Moment

He halted in the wind, and - what was that
Far in the maples, pale, but not a ghost?
He stood there bringing March against his thought,
And yet too ready to believe the most.

'Oh, that's the Paradise-in-bloom,' I said;
And truly it was fair enough for flowers
had we but in us to assume in march
Such white luxuriance of May for ours.

We stood a moment so in a strange world,
Myself as one his own pretense deceives;
And then I said the truth (and we moved on) .
A young beech clinging to its last year's leaves.

 

 

Into My Own

One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

I should not be withheld but that some day
into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

I do not see why I should e'er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.

They would not find me changed from him they knew--
Only more sure of all I though was true.

 

 
Robert Frost (26 maart 1874 – 29 januari 1963)
Rond 1895

 

 

De Duitse schrijver Patrick Süskind werd geboren in Ambach op 26 maart 1949. Zie ook alle tags voor Patrick Süskind op dit blog.

Uit: Das Parfum

„Und erst später, am Vorabend der Französischen Revolution, nachdem einige der Leichengräben gefährlich eingestürzt waren und der Gestank des überquellenden Friedhofs die Anwohner nicht mehr zu bloßen Protesten, sondern zu wahren Aufständen trieb, wurde er endlich geschlossen und aufgelassen, wurden die Millionen Knochen und Schädel in die Katakomben von Montmartre geschaufelt, und man errichtete an seiner Stelle einen Marktplatz für Viktualien.
Hier nun, am allerstinkendsten Ort des gesamten Königreichs, wurde am 17. Juli 1738 Jean-Baptiste Grenouille geboren. Es war einer der heißesten Tage des Jahres. Die Hitze lag wie Blei über dem Friedhof und quetschte den nach einer Mischung aus fauligen Melonen und verbranntem Horn riechenden Verwesungsbrodem in die benachbarten Gassen. Grenouilles Mutter stand, als die Wehen einsetzten, an einer Fischbude in der Rue aux Fers und schuppte Weißlinge, die sie zuvor ausgenommen hatte. Die Fische, angeblich erst am Morgen aus der Seine gezogen, stanken bereits so sehr, daß ihr Geruch den Leichengeruch überdeckte. Grenouilles Mutter aber nahm weder den Fisch- noch den Leichengeruch wahr, denn ihre Nase war gegen Gerüche im höchsten Maße abgestumpft, und außerdem schmerzte ihr Leib, und der Schmerz tötete alle Empfänglichkeit für äußere Sinneseindrücke. Sie wollte nur noch, daß der Schmerz aufhöre, sie wollte die eklige Geburt so rasch als möglich hinter sich bringen. Es war ihre fünfte. Alle vorhergehenden hatte sie hier an der Fischbude absolviert, und alle waren Totgeburten oder Halbtotgeburten gewesen, denn das blutige Fleisch, das da herauskam, unterschied sich nicht viel von dem Fischgekröse, das da schon lag, und lebte auch nicht viel mehr, und abends wurde alles mitsammen weggeschaufelt und hinübergekarrt zum Friedhof oder hinunter zum Fluß.“

 

 
Patrick Süskind (Ambach, 26 maart 1949)

 

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 26e maart ook mijn blog van 26 maart 2012 deel 1 en eveneens deel 2.

De Vlaamse schrijver Pol Hoste werd geboren in Lokeren op 25 maart 1947. Zie ook alle tags voor Pol Hoste op dit blog.

Uit: High Key

“Laten we met een feestje beginnen in de binnentuin van een hotel waar overdadig zonlicht weerkaatst op witgekalkte muren. Klimrozen en hortensia’s staan in bloei. Uit de paardestallen schiet een zwaluw weg. Raakt zoveel naturalisme ons nog?
Na het overzoete dessert poseerde het pas gehuwde paar bij de volière met tropische vogels. De illegaal geïmporteerde kolibiries zongen voor de gelegenheid een Caraïbisch wijsje. In de opening van de dubbel beglaasde tuindeur verscheen een gezelschap dat met zijn getater de honingvogeltjes deed beven. Een uitgelaten dalmatiër stoof op de bruid af.
“Brucargo, my dear, come here!”
“Ik zweer het u!” De grootvader was aan zijn vijfde liter wijn begonnen. Een danseres wenste het echtpaar geluk.
“Chateauneuf.” De bruidegom haalde een kleurenfoto uit zijn portefeuille.
“North Sea, booreiland.”
“Boring Heiland.”
“Ik zweer het u!”
“Prosper, verdomme, houd u in!”
“What did he say?”
“Flamenco tropical. She’s a dancer.”
“Sweet Brucargo, he’s a dalmatiër.”
“You say it in Spanish.”
Op die manier zullen we de hoofdpersonages onder de figuranten moeten zoeken. Van de danseres konden we daarnet al even een glimp opvangen, maar ik denk niet dat we in dit fragment ook nog kennis zullen maken met de schrijfster, haar zus en haar vriendin. De kans dat het feestvierende gezelschap hun de gelegenheid biedt om aan het woord te komen is trouwens verwaarloosbaar.”

 

 
Pol Hoste (Lokeren, 25 maart 1947)

 

 

De Nederlandse dichter en vertaler Menno van der Beek werd geboren op 25 maart 1967 in Rotterdam. Zie ook alle tags voor Menno van der Beek op dit blog.

 

Avatar

Ik eet al dagen niet. Ik loop met zijn portret
voor mijn gezicht. De meeste mensen
zullen dus denken dat ik iemand anders ben
met een bekend gezicht dat vreemde dingen zegt.

We lijken even groot, maar niemand weet
dat ik gewicht verlies, nog meer verliezen zal.

Er hoeft maar weinig te gebeuren. Als
ik een visioen krijg, zie ik eten.

Ik laat de foto uit mijn handen vallen
en pak een bord. Ik zal hem niet vergeten.

 

 
Menno Van der Beek (Rotterdam, 25 maart 1967)

 

 

De Amerikaanse schrijfster Flannery O'Connor werd geboren op 25 maart 1925 in Savannah, Georgia. Zie ook  alle tags voor Flannery O'Connor op dit blog.

Uit: A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories

"She wouldn't stay at home for a million bucks," June Star said. "Afraid she'd miss something. She has to go everywhere we go."
"All right, Miss," the grandmother said. "Just re- member that the next time you want me to curl your hair."
June Star said her hair was naturally curly.
The next morning the grandmother was the first one in the car, ready to go. She had her big black valise that looked like the head of a hippopotamus in one corner, and underneath it she was hiding a basket with Pitty Sing, the cat, in it. She didn't intend for the cat to be left alone in the house for three days because he would miss her too much and she was afraid he might brush against one of her gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself. Her son, Bailey, didn't like to arrive at a motel with a cat.
She sat in the middle of the back seat with John Wesley and June Star on either side of her. Bailey and the children's mother and the baby sat in front and they left Atlanta at eight forty-five with the mileage on the car at 55890. The grandmother wrote this down because she thought it would be interesting to say how many miles they had been when they got back. It took them twenty minutes to reach the outskirts of the city.
The old lady settled herself comfortably, removing her white cotton gloves and putting them up with her purse on the shelf in front of the back window. The children's mother still had on slacks and still had her head tied up in a green kerchief, but the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.”

 

 
Flannery O'Connor (25 maart 1925 – 3 augustus 1964)

 

 

De Mexicaanse dichter en schrijver Jaime Sabines Gutiérrez werd geboren op 25 maart 1926 in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas. Zie ook alle tags voor Jaime Sabines op dit blog.;

 

I HOPE TO BE CURED OF YOU one of these days. I have to quit smoking you, drinking you, thinking you. It’s possible, following the moral guidelines of our times. I prescribe time, abstinence, solitude.

Would you mind if I loved you for only a week? It’s neither too much nor too little. It’s plenty. In a week one can gather up all the words of love that have ever been uttered and set them ablaze. I’m going to ignite you with this bonfire of burned-out love. And silence too. Because the finest words of love are between two people who say nothing.

We will have to burn this other lateral and subversive language of the lover as well. (You know I am really telling you I love when I say: “It’s getting hot,” “Give me water,” “Do you know how to drive?”, “Night has fallen”… Among the people, in the midst of your folks and mine, I have said to you, “It is late,” and you knew that I was saying, “I love you.”)

One week more to gather up all the love of time. To give it to you. So you can do whatever you want with it: keep it, caress it, throw it away. It serves no purpose, that much is certain. I only want one week to figure things out. Because this is a lot like leaving a lunatic asylum to enter a graveyard.

 

Vertaald door Colin Carberry

 

 
Jaime Sabines (25 maart 1926 – 19 maart 1999)

 

 

 

De Nederlandse cartoonist en striptekenaar Peter van Straaten werd geboren in Arnhem op 25 maart 1935. Zie ook alle tags voor Peter van Straaten op dit blog.

 

 
“Er zijn zo ontzettend weinig liève schrijvers”

 

 

 
Peter Van Straaten (Arnhem, 25 maart 1935)

 

 

De Amerikaanse schrijfster en sociale activiste Toni Cade Bambara werd als Miltona Mirkin Cade geboren op 25 maart 1939 in New York. Zie ook alle tags voor Toni Cade Bambara op dit blog.

Uit: Those Bones Are Not My Child

“You dial the school. The woman who answers tells you there's no one in the building. You want to scream, point out the illogic of that, and slam down the phone. But you wheedle, you plead, you beg her to please check, it's an emergency. You can tell by the way she sucks her teeth and sets the receiver down that you're known in that office. You've been up there often about incidents they called "discipline" and you called "battering." Things weren't tense enough in Atlanta, teachers were sending "acting-out problems" to the coach to be paddled. In cut-off sweats, he took a wide-legged stance and, arms crossed against his bulging chest, asked, since it wasn't your child sent to him for punishment, what is your problem?
Exactly what the principal had wanted to know when the parents broke up the PTA meeting, demanding security measures in the school. Never enough textbooks to go around; students would linger after school to borrow each other's, then, having missed the bus, would arrive home to an hysterical household. The men voted to form safety patrols. The principal went off: "There will be no vigilantes in my school!"
City under siege. Armed helicopters overhead. Bullhorns bellowing to stay indoors. The curfew pushed back into the p.m. hours. Gun stores extending sales into the a.m. hours. Hardware stores scrambling to meet the demand for burglar bars, deadbolt locks, alarms, lead pipes, and under-the-counter cans of mace and boxes of pellets. Atlanta a magnet for every bounty hunter, kook, amateur sleuth, sooth-sayer, do-gooder, right-wing provocateur, left-wing adventurer, porno filmmaker, crack-shot supercop, crackpot analyst, paramilitary thug, hustler, and free-lance fool. But there should be no patrols on the principal's turf. "Unladylike," you heard the gym teacher say when you led the PTA walkout. But how do you conduct a polite discussion about murder?"

 

 
Toni Cade Bambara (25 maart 1939 – 9 december 1995)
Cover

 

 

De Italiaanse schrijver Antonio Fogazzaro werd geboren op 25 maart 1842 in Vicenza. Zie ook alle tags voor Antonio Fogazzaro op dit blog.

Uit: The Saint

“It thus happened that towards the end of April Noemi was with the Dessalles at Bruges. They occupied a small villa on the shore of the little mirror of water called "Lac d'Amour." Carlino had fallen in love with Bruges and especially with the Lac d'Amour, the name of which he contemplated giving to the novel he dreamed of writing. As yet, however, the novel existed only in his brain, while he lived in the pleasant anticipation of one day astonishing the world with an exquisite and original work of art.
"En tout cas," Noemi replied—"not with all my heart."
"Why?"
"Because I am thinking of giving my heart to another person."
"To whom?"
"To a monk."
Jeanne shuddered, and Noemi, to whom her friend had confided the story of her hopeless love for the man who had disappeared, buried in the hidden solitude of a cloister, trembled lest she had erred in thus lightly introducing a subject with which her mind was much occupied.
"By the way, what about Memling," she said, colouring violently, "we were going to talk about Memling."
She spoke in French, and Jeanne answered gently:
"You know you must speak Italian."
Her eyes were so sad and despairing that Noemi took no notice of her reproof, and continued in French, saying many endearing things, and begging for a loving word and a kiss. Both were willingly bestowed. Noemi did not at once succeed in restoring her friend to her usual calm; but Jeanne, smoothing back Noemi's hair from her brow with both hands, and following the caressing gesture with her eyes, begged her gently not to be afraid that she had wounded her. Sad she was indeed, but that was no new thing. True she was never gay. This Noemi admitted, but to-day the cloud of sorrow seemed heavier than ever. Perhaps it was the fault of l'Intruse. Jeanne said, "Indeed it must be so," but with a look and an accent that implied that l'Intruse who had made her so sad was not the imaginary being in Maeterlinck's book but the terrible Reaper in person."

 

 
Antonio Fogazzaro (25 maart 1842 – 7 maart 1911)

 

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 25e maart ook mijn blog van 25 maart 2014 en ook mijn blog van 25 maart 2012 deel 2 en eveneens deel 3.

 

Bij Maria Boodschap

 

 
Annunciatie door El Greco, rond 1576

 

 

Mariae Verkündigung

Nicht daß ein Engel eintrat (das erkenn),
erschreckte sie. Sowenig andre, wenn
ein Sonnenstrahl oder der Mond bei Nacht
in ihrem Zimmer sich zu schaffen macht,
auffahren -, pflegte sie an der Gestalt,
in der ein Engel ging, sich zu entrüsten;
sie ahnte kaum, daß dieser Aufenthalt
mühsam für Engel ist. (O wenn wir wüßten,
wie rein sie war. Hat eine Hirschkuh nicht,
die, liegend, einmal sie im Wald eräugte,
sich so in sie versehn, daß sich in ihr,
ganz ohne Paarigen, das Einhorn zeugte,
das Tier aus Licht, das reine Tier -.)
Nicht, daß er eintrat, aber daß er dicht,
der Engel, eines Jünglings Angesicht
so zu ihr neigte; daß sein Blick und der,
mit dem sie aufsah, so zusammenschlugen
als wäre draußen plötzlich alles leer
und, was Millionen schauten, trieben, trugen,
hineingedrängt in sie: nur sie und er;
Schaun und Geschautes, Aug und Augenweide
sonst nirgends als an dieser Stelle -: sieh,
dieses erschreckt. Und sie erschraken beide.
 
Dann sang der Engel seine Melodie.

 

 

 
Rainer Maria Rilke (4 december 1875 – 29 december 1926)
Glas-in-lood raam van Alfons Mucha, Sint-Vituskathedraal, Praag (detail)
Rilke werd in Praag geboren.

 

 

Zie voor de schrijvers van de 25^e maart ook mijn volgende blog van vandaag.